Odd
by reallytrulyyours
Summary: Magic is morphed by beliefs and designed by the user. Hermione knows that Touch is Bad and her magic learns this too. (Kinda dark)
1. Chapter 1

Her parents, dentists who ran a clinic were clinical with their only daughter. They were academics who firmly believed that children should be seen and not heard. And certainly not touched.

Her first bought of magic was to give herself something to hold. A teddy named Francis, overstuffed and soft. This of course did not help her relationship with her God fearing parents. She was their daughter, so they wouldn't hurt her, but Francis certainly did not make it possible to love her.

The kids in primary school had always mocked her for her looks and her awkwardness. Her teeth were too funny and her hair to wild to avoid that. She wasn't supposed to talk out of turn and ideally not at all at home, so how was she supposed to make friends?

The first time she remembers being touched was when Jenny decided she had had enough of Hermione's oddness. Jenny said she just wanted to help her with her hair, help her calm it down because "her hair is big too, but she knows the right way to take care of it." Hermione agreed, excited at the prospect of a friend, her first friend. She wasn't expecting the burst of pain that radiated across her scalp as Jenny yanked out a clump of hair. It was a large enough section that she couldn't stop the tears no matter how much she knew she should hide it. Sadly, the missing section couldn't be seen, so when Jenny let the hair slip through her fingers, any and all proof was gone.

The laughter echoed around in her head, banging against her skull and making it worse. But now she knew. Only let people you trust touch you. If you don't trust them, you don't know what they really want to do to you.

The next few times she was touched were for the same reason, other children trying to punish her for her audacity to be different. Pushing on the playground, trips in the hallway, shoving her into someone else so more people hate her.

By this time she learned that touch was a bad thing to be feared because nothing good ever came of it.

But then she had Mrs. Henley as a teacher.

Mrs. Henley was an older woman who truly loved her students. She radiated it with every smile and praise she could direct towards them. Her goal was to make sure that her students would love to learn, and she achieved that goal with most students every year.

Hermione had already enjoyed reading. Books were a companion in her friendless world. One day, she answered a question and related it back to the book she was reading, and Mrs. Henley patted her on the shoulder.

It was the first positive touch she could ever remember feeling. She wondered if _this_ was the reason the children around her sought each other out. Regardless, she knew what she had to do to feel it again.

She had to read. She had to learn.

And she did. Mrs. Henley had a new favorite student in the bright young girl and was always freely giving her love and praise. Until she couldn't.

Mrs. Henley died in her sleep 3 months from the end of the year. She had been getting sicker though the year at a worrying rate, but the doctors had no idea what was wrong.

The teacher that replaced her smacked at her hands ever time she doodled in her notebook.

Touch was bad. People were dangerous and should not be allowed too close.

When professor McGonagall showed up at the door and turned herself into a cat, she realized this was her chance to find friends, find people that were Odd like her and possibly feel a soft touch. Her youth allowed her to hold out hope that everything would be different.


	2. Chapter 2

…but it wasn't.

People still made fun of her and tripped her in the halls. Her roommates would hide her things and shove her away from the bathroom so they could have it first. But now there were magic touches too. Every time someone would cast a spell near her, she could feel it as one might feel a person behind you. When they cast a spell _at_ her, it was a shove, a punch, or a grab. A touch of someone's magical core against her own and it was repulsive and staining.

She would feel any brush against her core for hours after, fading ever so slowly, taunting her with the knowledge that touch was bad. Reminding her how unsafe it is.

Halloween marked a change. The red haired boy who had made her arrival in this world so disappointing had to work with her. His unfocused and incorrect spell work had his core flaring randomly, trying to expel the magic he could almost call up. She tried to help him, tried to give him an example so he could feel how her core moved with the spell. That's how she learned so fast. She didn't really want to help him, but she would do almost anything to stop the way his sticky core kept getting closer to hers.

After class is the moment that really hurt though. There he was, the redheaded menace, talking about her as if doing something correctly was something only truly horrible people do. So she was a "nightmare" for making a feather fly? That's rich coming from someone who's magical core keeps trying to grab at everyone else's. But that wasn't what hurt. What hurt was when the crowd moved forward, shoving her into the boy who hated her so much. Touch was Bad before she knew about magic. But now that she could feel that ball of power inside her, touch was Painful. The jealousy and inferiority he felt had morphed to hate to be directed at her and his magical core burned with it. As she stumbled into him, her body recoiled from the physical touch as her core coiled into an even tighter knot to avoid his. This is when Hermione learned that magical cores aren't balls of magic located in the chest. It was a map of nerves throughout her entire body, touching everything her skin touched. Ron's core felt like boiling wax stuck under her nails and across her scalp, clinging to her and scalding her.

She ran to the bathroom to scrub herself clean, but there was nothing she could do. The distance helped, but it still lingered. She couldn't focus on anything with it on her. Time stopped or sped up or stayed the same, it didn't matter. All that mattered was that the feeling was slowly fading. Slowly the world was coming back to her as the thick haze of panic receded.

But as reality trickled in, so did the sounds of something big in the hallway. She could feel its steps through the floor even though the solid stone building didn't buckle. When the door opened, the smell hit her. Hard. It was suffocating, clouding her lungs and burning her eyes. Her vision blurred as the tears returned, trying to protect her eyes from the corrupted air.

Then he walked in, and Hermione learned another important fact. Magical creatures didn't have magical cores, they had auras that surrounded and protected them. It was a sixth sense that they could feel with, but they couldn't use that magic to affect their surroundings. A sickly brown mist draped around the troll, swirling and curling off its skin. It tried to reach for her as the troll searched the room. She tried to stay away as much as she could, but she was trapped.

It stumbled closer to her and the mist swallowed her up. Hermione was shocked to realize that the aura didn't feel as awful as a magical core. Much like the mist it resembled, it floated around her, touching but not really _touching_ her. It was overwhelming at first, the fear morphing into confusion then awe. She was able to focus again on the world around her and realized she wasn't alone as two boys started throwing debris at the troll. She realized there was no more places she could run, she had to fight.

She didn't know any offensive spells at this point, but she figured a mass of magic wouldn't feel good, so she started to gather her magic. As she stood there in the troll's mist, trying to create a small ball of magic to throw, she realized not all the magic she was pulling on came from her. She kept pulling on this Other source, hoping to save as much as her magic as possible. The mist around her dissipated. She had taken the magic from the troll. In all her reading she had never heard of anything like it or anything even close to it.

This was Not Good.

This was Different and therefore Bad.

This was Odd.

She started panicking again, unable to focus on the real world.

She was Odd.

She was scared.

She had to pull herself together and freak out later.

She had to regain control.

When she opened her eyes, the black haired boy was pulling his wand from the troll's nose, likely stabbing it brain and killing it. As the creature stopped breathing, the magic she had stolen from it changed. The brown color drained from it and it blended into the rest of her magic, resulting in a core slightly larger than before. It no longer contained the sense of otherness it had before, and within moments she could move it like she did with the magic she was born with.

She lied to the professors that day. She didn't want the boys to tell them how easy it was to sneak up on the creature and take it down. From what she read, their innate magic is what helped the idiotic creatures survive. The innate magic she stole.

This adventure bonded the three together. The boys seemed to like that she was willing to lie to the professors and she liked that they seemed to like her.


End file.
